Reflections on Ballet and dance-watching in 2017

[Jan McNulty]

I really enjoyed the vast majority of the performances I saw in 2017 and in that respect it was a pretty even year.  Here's just a couple of things I enjoyed most:

 

1.  Northern Ballet - Casanova - opening night and subsequent tour.  I loved everything about this production, Northern Ballet were very skilful with their teasers and the Casanova Unmasked event was a masterclass in how to whip your audience up into a frenzy of anticipation.  The atmosphere in the theatre on the first night was ELECTRIC and the performance more than exceeded expectation.  Congratulations to Giuliano Contadini for his magnificent creation of the eponymous role.  The other performances I saw were all terrific too and the 2 extra performances in August were a lovely treat.  The performance on the Saturday afternoon was utterly magnificent and possibly the best of the whole run.  Now all we need to know is when it is being broadcast.

 

2.  Northern Ballet - A Celebration of Sir Kenneth MacMillan in Bradford.  What an enticing programme this was - Concerto, Las Hermanas and Gloria.  How far out of their comfort zone were the dancers of Northern Ballet?  Not at all out of their comfort zone, they were triumphant!

 

3.  Northern Ballet - Gloria - ROH.  I was so proud to be a follower of Northern Ballet.  Seeing the performance with the live orchestra and chorus and how the dancers inhabited a space far larger than the one in Bradford and how they inhabited the ballet.  I heard the people behind me before the start saying that they had never heard of Northern Ballet.  At the end of Gloria I heard them saying how good they had been!

 

4.  Birmingham Royal Ballet had a year of consolidation rather than innovation but I did see some terrific performances.  My highlights were:

1. Brandon Lawrence every time he stepped on stage.
2. Lachlan Monaghan every time he stepped on stage (and especially his debut as Franz in Bristol).
3. Nao Sakuma - also known as Wonder Woman.
4. The opening night (in Cheltenham) of Ruth Brill's Arcadia.
5. All the performances of Concerto I saw.

 

5.  The matinee of Jewels at ROH on 1st April - Mr Campbell sparkling in Rubies.

 

6.  The Ann Maguire Memorial Gala in Leeds - a lovely heart-warming evening with some terrific performances to enjoy.

 

7.  Akram Khan's Giselle in Liverpool - thank you Tamara Rojo for keeping the faith with Liverpool.

 

 

[David]

Can I add Scottish Ballet's revival of Le Baiser de la Fee to your list of the regional achievements please?

[Terpsichore]

I agree with Janet McNulty. Last year was an excellent one for Northern Ballet with three new full length shows and I enjoyed them all.   I expected much from Kenneth Tindall's Casanova and I was not disappointed.  I did not know what to expect from The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas but was profoundly moved by it.   I was also impressed by David Nixon's The Little Mermaid which I regard as one of his best works. I have note liked everything that Nixon has created but I did like that work.   I have reviewed several performances of Casanova and written a feature on Tindall but have not yet got round to writing about Mermaid though I hope to do so shortly,  I have however reviewed the other company performances including the Macmillan triple bill at Bradford.

Scottish Ballet was the first company that I got to know and love and I saw an excellent performance of Christopher Hampson's Hansel and Gretel in Newcastle and the double bill at Sadler's Wells in the summer which I also enjoyed.  I also had the pleasure of meeting Hampson at the London Ballet Circle earlier in the year.   I am still a big fan of the company. In fact, it is m y favourite British company after the Royal Ballet.

 

Another national company of which I am a Friend as well as a fan is Ballet Cymru.  I admire everything that Darius James and Any Doughty create.   I liked their Light Princess but I think the highlight of their year was their Midsummer Night's Dream.   I enjoyed it even more than Ashton's Dream much as I like that work.

 

Yet another company that I admire greatly is the Birmingham Royal Ballet.  I have always liked Ruth Brill as a dancer but I admire her even more as a choreographer after seeing her Arcadia. David mentioned Scottish Ballet's Le Baiser de la Fee above and I agree with him. However, I also want to cheer Birmingham's which was performed with Ruth Brill's work.   I also gather from my colleague Gita that Ratmansky's for Miami City Ballet was excellent. Returning to Birmingham, I enjoyed their Coppelia, Nutcracker (which I have still to review) their Cinderella at the Lowry.

 

Like Janet McNulty I had cause to thank the management of English National Ballet for bringing a favourite ballet to my home town.   In my case it was La Sylphide in Manchester. I greatly prefer La Sylphide to any version of Giselle (though I did enjoy ENB's performance of Mary Skeeping's in January at the Coliseum very much indeed) and particularly to Akram Khan's.  I also managed to say hello to Sarah Kundi whom I have followed for years but met for the first time only in October.

 

I think the best show I saw all year was the Sleeping Beauty by the Dutch National Ballet which I saw in Amsterdam on 17 Dec  though the Paris Opera Ballet's Don Quixote at the Bastille with Isabella Boylston as Kitri on Christmas Day ran it a close second.   

 

Looking forward to 2018 the Royal Ballet's performance of the Nutcracker on New Year's day was an excellent start to the New Year and I have high hopes for the new Swan Lake.   Other shows that I hope to see include Peter Darrell's The Nutcracker in Newcastle, the Dutch National Ballet's Don Quixote in Amsterdam and Sharon Watson's Windrush in February.

 

Finally I should like to wish the organizers of this website and all the subscribers a very happy New Year.  I have not had much time to contribute to the site lately. It has been hard enough even to keep up my own blog or even get to class or the theatre.  Nevertheless, I read all the digests and other emails and am always interested in  your news and views even though I don't always agree with them.

[capybara]

I am surprised that more people who post on here do not seem to have responded to the ROH's invitation to offer their ballet highlights here:

 

http://www.roh.org.uk/news/what-was-your-royal-ballet-highlight-of-2017

[bridiem]

9 minutes ago, capybara said:

I am surprised that more people who post on here do not seem to have responded to the ROH's invitation to offer their ballet highlights here:

 

http://www.roh.org.uk/news/what-was-your-royal-ballet-highlight-of-2017

 

I have done this myself; but to be honest I tend to assume that these ROH questions are more of a PR exercise than a real wish to find out what people are thinking. But maybe I'm just being cynical. And yes, there don't seem to be that many 'regulars' who have posted (last time I looked) - quite a few sound as if they've only been once, or only seen a live screening, etc.

[zxDaveM]

5 minutes ago, bridiem said:

 

I have done this myself; but to be honest I tend to assume that these ROH questions are more of a PR exercise than a real wish to find out what people are thinking. But maybe I'm just being cynical. And yes, there don't seem to be that many 'regulars' who have posted (last time I looked) - quite a few sound as if they've only been once, or only seen a live screening, etc.

 

I've posted my unashamedly biased 2p worth! :-)

 

[Geoff]

16 minutes ago, bridiem said:

quite a few sound as if they've only been once, or only seen a live screening, etc.

 

Indeed. And some of those posting on the ballet page write about opera, and some of those posting on the equivalent opera page write about ballet! It is a little worrying when one hears how much importance Covent Garden management place on the comments.

 

As to live screenings, this is, if I may be so bold as to suggest, an even greater problem with opera screenings, where the public can actually be misled (a voice that is not quite the thing when heard live can sound wonderful miked up, particularly if accompanied by a compelling "close up" onscreen acting performance) and I added a comment to the relevant page to make this point. I would be interested to know if people feel the same is possible with ballet, ie great onscreen but not so hot if you were in the theatre?

 

(PS Just checked back and found to my great embarrassment that on the ballet page I wrote Diamonds when I meant Emeralds. Pity Covent Garden doesn't allow for comment editing as such a senior moment gives quite a different impression of the point I wanted to make about the corps. Well, as my old form teacher used to say, must try harder. Sorry.)

 

 

 

 

Edited January 3, 2018 by Geoff

[JohnS]

A couple of points.

 

Posters often use different names for the Ballet Forum and Royal Opera House so whilst I can see some overlaps, I'd be struggling to say how many of the 100+ comments are made by Ballet Forum members.

 

I wouldn't be too cynical about the ROH's PR exercise: I think it's good that the ROH asks for such contributions and very much hope the winners enjoy their tickets!

[Terpsichore]

1 hour ago, capybara said:

I am surprised that more people who post on here do not seem to have responded to the ROH's invitation to offer their ballet highlights here:

 

http://www.roh.org.uk/news/what-was-your-royal-ballet-highlight-of-2017

 

Unless I misunderstood it, the above link invites only "Royal Ballet Highlights" (my emphasis) not for ballet highlights in general. Now, much as I love and admire the Royal Ballet, there are other companies.

 

[Terpsichore]

Ever since I started blogging about ballet I have reviewed the year and for what it is worth as I don't yet give any cash prizes I make  number of awards.   These are entirely subjective and based on what I had seen the previous year.   As I work from, but do not live in, London I tend to see shows that I can reach easily and economically from my Pennine fastness at weekends.  Most of the shows that I see are therefore in the Northern  Powerhouse cities though I make occasional excursions to Birmingham, Newport, Edinburgh and Glasgow.   As it is often cheaper and easier to nip across to the continent than battle with traffic on the M1 or hang around at Doncaster station for a crowded or overpriced train and as the Dutch National Ballet is a great company I make a lot of trips to Amsterdam.  Consequently, my choices may be regarded by some as a little eccentric.   They are certainly not Smokecentric.

Anyway, here goes:

• My company of the year is Northern Ballet for three excellent new full length ballets and a splendid triple bill of MacMillan in Bradford.  They also have some of m y favourite dancers including my male dancer of the year,  as well as Hannah Bateman and Dreda Blow and three younger artists I like a lot, Rachael Gillespie, Abigail Prudames and Mlindi Kulashe.  While I don't like everything that David Nixon has created I did like his Little Mermaid  which is perhaps his best work yet.  My runner up would have been Birmingham Royal Ballet which is the other company of which I saw a lot last year. I particularly liked Ruth Brill's Arcadia.  I also liked Birmingham's Cinderella at the Lowry and its Coppelia and The Nutcracker at the Hippodrome.   My company of the year last year the Dutch National Ballet.
• My ballet of the year was the Dutch National Ballet's performance of "The Sleeping Beauty" on 17 Dec at the Music Theatre  or Stopera with Maia Makhateli as Aurora and Daniel Camargo as Florimund.   For most of the year I thought it would be Northern's Casanova at the Lowry with Javier Torres in the lead role.   Last year I think I chose the Bolshoi's performance of Maillot's Taming of the Shrew at Covent Garden;
• My one act ballet of the year was Ruth Brill's Arcadia though I did like Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's Little Red Riding Hood for Ballet Black which I saw on no less than three occasions.
• My ballerina of the year was Isabella Boylston for a breathtaking performance as Kitri at the Bastille opera house as guest artist of the Paris Opera ballet on Christmas day.  The runner up would have been Maia Makhateli.  Last year it was Lauren Cuthbertson.
• I had to scratch my head to think of the male dancer who had impressed me most last year but I opted for Javier Torres for his excellent performance of Casanova at the Lowry and a devastating performance as the fiance in Las Hermanas in Bradford.   Last year it was Artur Shesterikov of the Dutch National Ballet.
• My choreographer of the year was Kenneth Tindall for Casanova though I inclined strongly towards Ruth Brill and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa.  He got it because his was a full length ballet.   Last year my choreographer of the year was Ted Brandsen for his Mata Hari and Coppelia.  There are some fine young choreographers in Amsterdam whose work I saw in New Moves in the summer. Expect to hear a lot about Cristiano Principato, Milena Siderova and Thomas van Damme in future.

As I said it is all a bit of fun.   I hope it is not an altogether uninformed choice.   I get to see some 50 ballets or performances of other types of dance a year and I have done for most of the years of my adult life.   I even do a little bit of ballet in what little spare time I have.   You can read the whole article in my blog if you so wish.

Edited January 8, 2018 by Terpsichore

[zxDaveM]

On 03/01/2018 at 16:04, Terpsichore said:

 

Unless I misunderstood it, the above link invites only "Royal Ballet Highlights" (my emphasis) not for ballet highlights in general. Now, much as I love and admire the Royal Ballet, there are other companies.

 

 

yes there are, but I don't think the Royal Opera House, home of the Royal Ballet, would want highlights about other companies on their web page

[assoluta]

On 1/3/2018 at 06:39, bridiem said:

 

I have done this myself; but to be honest I tend to assume that these ROH questions are more of a PR exercise than a real wish to find out what people are thinking. But maybe I'm just being cynical. And yes, there don't seem to be that many 'regulars' who have posted (last time I looked) - quite a few sound as if they've only been once, or only seen a live screening, etc.

 

I think you are realistic. I have a similar feeling that a lot of things they do is merely a PR exercise.

[Terpsichore]

1 hour ago, zxDaveM said:

 

yes there are, but I don't think the Royal Opera House, home of the Royal Ballet, would want highlights about other companies on their web page

 

That's precisely why "more people who post on here do not seem to have responded to the ROH's invitation to offer their ballet highlights" there.

[alison]

I'm surprised this thread doesn't seem to have taken off more than it has.  Having been forced, through no fault of my own, to miss pretty much 3/4 of the year's output, I'd hoped people might have let me know what I've been missing (go on, rub it in, it really doesn't matter ).  So many debuts, too many "last" performances ... and  I had to completely miss the second cast of Symphonic Variations